Friday Flash: Doll

It wasn't enough that it had her sister's hair, it had to smell like her too. Josie wiped the glue off her hands and took the doll to her sister's bedroom.

The perfume was easy to find, Josie squirted the voodoo doll twice, making her nose tickle. Then she noticed the kohl pencil and used that to draw on the eyes, liking the way the blue made the face look even more like her sister.

Cradling it in her palms, she went into her bedroom and laid the small wax effigy on the newspaper that had protected the carpet from its creation. The air was oppressive, she could see the heat haze through the open window. Leonie would be home soon and then her parents, so she had to work fast.

"You," she said, pointing at the doll and lowering her voice. "You are my sister, Leonie Jane Lassiter, Bringer of Doom and Sorrow, the most evil girl ever to walk the halls of Westfield School."

Josie smiled, liking the sound of that. She pulled out the wizard's cape she hid right at the back of her wardrobe, one that no-one else knew she still wore. It felt good.

"You have done terrible things to your sister," she boomed on. "Terrible things and now you… will…. pay!"

She ran into the kitchen, grabbed the lemon juice and the ready chopped garlic in a jar, and returned with a flourish of her cloak.

"For reading my diary, I curse you with red and itchy eyes!"

She jerked drops of lemon juice onto the kohl eyes, enjoying the way it made the blue dots smear and run down the side of the doll's head, like Leonie's make up should be running now, hopefully whilst she was walking home with friends.

"For telling Mum and Dad about World of Warcraft, I curse you to always smell garlic wherever you go – forever!"

She used a pencil to dig out a scoop of garlic chunks and smeared them across the doll's face, immediately filling the room with its pungent smell.

Her phone chimed; a Facebook notification. She opened the link, pressing the garlic bits hard into the wax nose as the screen loaded.

"@JosieLass isn't this your sister and you know who?" Her best friend had linked to a picture in her sister's album.

Leonie's arms – her skinny stick-like evil arms – were wrapped around the most beautiful boy in the school. The one she had described so lovingly in the diary her sister had stolen and read four days ago.

Josie screamed and threw the phone across the room before leaping up to grab the pack of pins from her sewing box. "Bitch!" she yelled, driving the first pin out of the box into the doll's head.

She felt a pressure in her own skull as she picked up the second pin, and a deep rolling thunder intensified it. Through her black rage, there was a bright chink of delight. Perfect; everyone knew that dark magic worked best during a storm.

"This is for stealing my future boyfriend!" she drove the second pin deeper into the doll's head and left it there. She thought of when Leonie broke the figurine and blamed it on her, and got away with it, the same when she'd stolen the last pound from her mother's purse. They always believed her because she was so pretty and perfect, like a little doll. Not like Jumbo Josie.

The thunder clouds were coming in fast, eating up the blue sky, the air feeling heavy with impending rain. Josie stuck another pin in the doll's stomach. "You'll never have babies – and if you do, they'll come out looking like alien monsters and people will run away from them screaming."

A reel of cotton inspired her to wrap a length of it around the doll's neck and then hang it from the door handle. She prodded it to make it swing from side to side, like a murderer from a hangman's noose. She imagined Leonie choking to death on the pavement outside their school and laughed till she wept.

The boom of thunder was so loud it made her squeal, a gust of wind blasted in through the open window and the door slammed shut. Hearing a thud in the hallway, she opened the door and saw the broken doll on the floor, its head rolling towards the bathroom, the body broken into five pieces.

She stopped laughing.

Rain drummed on the windowsill of her room, she ran and shut the window, marvelling at the storm's sudden ferocity. Her alarm clock was wet, wiping the raindrops from it she noticed how late it was. Where was everyone?

The phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Josie? It's Dad, are you feeling better? Listen, your mother's train is late, so get Leonie to cook something for you both ok?"

"But she's-" she stopped herself. If Leonie was lying dead outside, she didn't want her Dad to know it had anything to do with her. "I'll tell her," she said.

She swept up the wax and put away the cloak. The storm passed and she wondered whether she should go out and look for Leonie, but just as she was reaching for her coat, the front door opened and she walked in.

"Lee! You're not dead!"

Her sister's lip curled. "Course I'm not."

"Have you been smelling garlic?"

"No. God you're so weird, why can't I have a normal little sister?"

Josie felt a pang of disappointment as her sister shoved her out of the way to hang up her drenched coat. "Not even stomach ache?"

Leonie kicked off her shoes, aiming them at Josie's legs, then turned to go to her room. Josie decided that the only satisfaction she was going to get was watching her sister's squelching socks leaving wet footprints behind her. That was before she saw the blood, and its steady stream down her sister's legs, mingling with the rainwater.

—

P.S. If you liked this story, you'll like this too…